The present invention relates to an electronic parts mounting apparatus and method for mounting various kinds of parts such as electronic parts on a circuit substrate.
According to a conventional apparatus for mounting an electronic part on a substrate, a parts unit comprising a tape-shaped electronic parts member having a reel around which a tape-shaped member holding many electronic parts is mounted on a parts cassette serving as a parts supply device. The parts cassettes are mounted on the parts supply section of the electronic parts mounting apparatus in a predetermined order.
In mounting the part on the substrate, the parts cassette holding electronic parts of a predetermined kind is placed at a position at which the part is sequentially taken out from the parts cassette. Each parts cassette sequentially feeds out the tape-shaped electronic parts units according to an operation for mounting an electronic part on the substrate. As a result, the electronic part is sequentially fed to a parts take-out position. Then, respective electronic parts are mounted on the substrate.
In checking whether or not a parts cassette has been set on a predetermined position of the parts supply section before mounting an electronic part on the substrate so as to avoid an erroneous mounting of an electronic part, as shown in FIG. 17, parts cassettes 71 set on a parts supply section are sequentially removed therefrom and an operator reads a bar code 73 provided on a reel 72 of a tape-shaped electronic parts unit mounted on the parts cassette 71 by means of a bar code reader 74. Then, the kind of parts read by the bar code reader 74 is compared automatically with that of parts registered in the control section of the electronic parts mounting apparatus.
When an electronic part is mounted on a different kind of substrate, an operator produces information such as the parts mounting speed required in mounting an electronic part on the substrate by checking the arrangement of the parts supply device and parts mounting condition by utilizing an operation panel or a monitor screen.
In an electronic parts mounting apparatus having a function of inspecting the characteristics of the part such as the resistance value or the capacitance thereof by measuring them before mounting the part on the electronic parts mounting apparatus, the reference value of the characteristics of the part with which values obtained by the measurement are compared are manually inputted to the control section of the electronic parts mounting apparatus.
However, it takes a long time to check whether or not a parts cassette is at the correct position of the parts supply section of the electronic parts mounting apparatus because the checking operation cannot be performed without manual labor. In addition, the part may be erroneously mounted on the substrate due to a mis-checking.
Another disadvantage of the conventional electronic parts mounting apparatus is that an operator is required to manually input the data of the parts mounting condition to the control section of the electronic parts mounting apparatus by the help of an operation panel and the monitor screen of the parts mounting apparatus. With the recent development of the technology of mounting an electronic part on the substrate, parts mounting conditions such as the generation of the parts distinguishing data is becoming more and more complicated. Therefore, the operator must expend additional efforts.
As described above, the operator is required to manually input the data of the characteristics of the part to the control section of the electronic parts mounting apparatus in inspecting the characteristic of the part, which takes much time and labor.